Jesus-Style Forgiveness

I’m really enjoying a book called The Jesus Creed, by Scot McKnight. The “Great Commandment” to love God and love others is what “the Jesus Creed” refers to. It’s Jesus’ most basic, fundamental summary of what life as a Christ-follower in the Kingdom of God is all about.

I’m hoping to blog a few things about some points that McKnight has made in the book, but for now I just want to mention something that came together for me between McKnight’s book and my study in The Book this morning.

In chapter 23 of “The Jesus Creed,” McKnight points out something that I’d never even thought of before. In the Old Testament, you don’t find a lot about humans forgiving one another. Not in the Mosaic Law and it’s list of commandments. Not in the Psalms. Not in the Prophets. We get a hint of it in the closing chapters of Genesis when Joseph “reassured [his brothers] and spoke kindly to them” in an act of forgiveness. However, for the most part, the Jewish religion, as taught in the pages of the TaNaK (or, Old Testament) is concerned with justice. As McKnight puts it, in the OT,

“forgiveness is something God does, not something humans do. If forgiveness is the objective reality of wiping the slate clean of one’s sinful behaviors and thoughts, then most of us would agree that only God can wipe the slate clan. This is why the vast majority of references to forgiveness in the Bible describe this process: Israel sins, YWHW forgives.”

Fast forward to my time in the Gospel of Mark this morning.

The opening text of chapter two tells the story of the paralytic who was lowered down to Jesus through a newly refurbished sky light in the roof, custom-built especially by the paralytic’s four loyal friends. (Those are the kinds of friends I want.) In an ironic twist, Jesus responds to the faith that he observes in this mischievous group of friends and says to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Never mind the fact that the paralytic and his friends are probably thinking, “That’s not exactly what we had in mind.” The story aims the cameras at the teachers of the law who, in a state of heresy-induced shock are thinking to themselves, “Nobody forgives sins but YHWH alone!!”

McKnight’s explanation of the role of forgiveness in the OT shed new light on this passage for me. I tend to be pretty hard on the religious leaders of Jesus’ day when I read the Gospels. And I really believe that paying careful attention to how Jesus dealt with them can prove quite illuminating for the Body of Christ today.

However, when I read this story again this morning, I was a little easier on the teachers of the law. They were being true to their religious training and to the Law of Moses. Sin is not something to be forgiven or wiped clean by other human beings. But it is something that God alone forgives in response to repentance. Recognizing this OT background on the concept of forgiveness deepens our understanding of the audacity of Jesus’ claim in the eyes of the Pharisees. Only as the ministry of Jesus progresses and climaxes at the resurrection can the people around Jesus (crowds and Pharisees alike) begin to see that this man could indeed forgive sins because He is, in fact, God Himself.

The even more difficult part comes later in the New Testament when God asks us to forgive one another “just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Click here and here for more thoughts on lessons to be learned from Jesus’ dealings with the teachers of the law.